HARDWARE REVIEW

Alienware Area 51 R6 GTX1080 (2018) Review

by Luke Walsh, July 31st, 2018

We’ve reviewed a lot of the Alienware machines at this point but the Alienware Area-51 R6 is one of the most powerful machines you can own for gaming but does have a hefty price tag to match.

It’s a nice looking machine, following the same design trends as the other Alienware devices and looking the same from previous Area-51 iterations. With a pyramid design that is meant to make it easier to carry, along with glowing LED lighting it surely looks like a magnificent beast but it is a little on the huge size.

In reality though, the insides are more than just gaming and it would be a waste not to use such RAW power for a lot of things, cryptocurrencies, rendering and more, you name it the Area-51 could probably do it, even make you a brew (disclaimer: that last bit is not true, it can’t make tea).

Area 51 R6 Design

Looking at the design in more the detail the first word that comes to mind is “massive”, the thing is huge one of the biggest machines I have seen and had the pleasure of testing. The triangular shape and LED lights wrapped in the silver chassis looks more alien tech that most of their other machines.

Measuring 25.2 x 22.4 x 10.7 inches it is not something you can casually keep hidden under your desk, to which the shape does not help with as it can’t be flush against the back of the desk. You would not want to be lugging it around too much though as it weighs a staggering 25KG but some thought has come into the design and size. Alienware has added some handles to the machine and with the angled design, picking it up is a lot easier than even some smaller, lighter cases.

Like with most Alienware and Dell machines you can customise a lot of what is inside the device and on the outside. The Alienware software lets you control the various lighting zones on the rig as well as some different effects.

There are enough ports on the machine to keep you going with nine USB ports (4 on the front and the rest on the back).

As for the GPU ports, thanks to two Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 cards you’ll get enough ports to connect probably more screens that you need with HDMI and Display Ports to connect up to your monitors.

Alienware Area 51 R6 Performance and Benchmarks

Testing out the twin Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080’s in action it pretty much outperformed our expectations with the 4K benchmarks being a lot better than we assumed they’d be. With the multicore testing though it supercharges to 26,121 ending up with a staggering score. In Firestrike there was a final score of around 20,000 that is the highest score we’ve seen this year in the machines we have looked at.

In games, the performance was no different. Testing the game in Fallout 4 without the frame rate cap the game was unplayable but in a good way. There were too many frames rendered too quickly with it capping out at over 119 FPS on 1080p, 115FPS @ 2K and 70FPS @4K. BioShock on any setting and we also tried the Witcher 3, 145FPS @ 1080p, 112FPS @ 2K, 75 @ 4K.

The dual-SLI 1080 cards will easily stand up against the test of time in the tech space. In terms of gaming performance, you’ll have no trouble with the Alienware machine for many years to come, it will stand up against the latest and greatest cards and rigs for a couple years but when you are spending upwards of 2-3K you’d expect this.

Alienware Area 51 R6 Configurations and Cost

Starting at £1749.00 for the base config, you’ll be up there with one of the most powerful machines money can buy, furthering the configs you can be looking at upwards of £5,000 but really for that money, your going to get less performance per pound that is is worth.

We tested the unit that sits at the higher-end of the spectrum which would set you back closer to the £5K mark. The lowest config will get you an i7-7800X, 8GB RAM and one GeForce GTX 1050Ti. To get at least one GTX 1080 you’ll need to spend £2449 which has the same processor but the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 with liquid cooling and 16GB RAM.

The lowest price configuration for the two cards, you’ll have to spend £3599 and you’ll also get an upgraded processor the i7-7820X. The dual cards have a whopping 11GB GDDR5X each and SLI-enabled. It also comes with an SSD and standard 2TB HDD using the SSD for boot and the bigger drive for your usual programs and games.

What is the Area-51 Like in the end?

In the end, the Area-51 still continues to be one of the most powerful high-end desktop machines you can buy. It has a massive build with some hefty weight but in an attractive casing that matches the Alienware aesthetic, the only downside really is the shape that although makes it easier to carry it can’t sit flush against anything.

With the dual Nvidia cards it is a beast of absolute power and will happily play anything you throw at it for a good few years to come and be an ideal machine for 4K and VR gaming. If you are looking to spend a lot of cash, the Alienware Area-51 should do you well and it really oozes power but it is no lie that for a lot of gamers it is an expensive piece of kit so the alternative is also the Alienware Aurora which is smaller and cheaper.